Betamax

In 1975, Sony released Betamax – an analogue-recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video.

Advertised with the slogan that you can “watch whatever, whenever”, Betamax quickly became outdated as it lost the videotape format war to VHS.

Consumers preferred the latter format because VHS recording time was two hours, and it allowed most feature films to be recorded without a tape change.

Despite this, Betamax recorders would only be discontinued in 2002 although new Betamax cassettes were available until March 2016, when Sony stopped making and selling them.

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